Recorded on the 'Heaven Shall Burn Tour' of 1996, Germania, originally released in 1997, is one of Marduk's many live albums that they have put out over the years. Featuring the classic line-up of Morgan, Legion, B. War, and Fredrik Andersson (also rumored to have had producer and Hypocrisy leader Peter Tagtgren on second guitar), Germania is a solid live document of where the Swedes were at the time, and compares favorably to their other live sets Infernal Eternal and Warschau.

Much of the material played here consists of Marduk's faster, raw, and primal tunes, the band in overdrive as they crank out pummeling blast beats, icy cold guitar riffs, and snarling vocals from Legion. If you are at all familiar with the Marduk discography, you'll be happy to know that many of the classics from the first half of their career are represented here, including "Beyond The Grace Of God", "Sulphur Souls", "Infernal Eternal", the awesome "Dracul Va Domni Din Nou In Transilvania", "On Darkened Wings", and the mighty "Legion", among many others. In some ways, Germania represents a sort of 'best of' from the Marduk cannon pre-1996. Mixed and engineered by Peter Tagtgren, this is a killer sounding recording, made even more powerful sounding thanks to the recent 'reinforcement' as they call it. The guitar work of Morgan is brutal, yet with an icy, metallic sheen to it, heightened by Andersson's manic blast beat attack. At just under an hour, this is must-have live black metal, plain and simple, showing a band that were just starting to come into their own as one of the leaders of the genre.

The bonus DVD, videotaped in 1994 at a tiny club in Olso, Norway, is another bootleg one-camera shoot, with one of the band's earlier line-ups, but despite the somewhat poor quality, the set has a certain charm and power to it, indicative of the early 90's black metal scene. Though the camera work is often pretty awful, you do get some nice close ups of the band cast in a dull orange-ish light, donned in the corpse paint & spikes, playing older tracks like "Sulphur Souls", "Burn My Coffin", and "On Darkened Wings" in front of a very small audience, with barely any stage room. A future powerhouse in their infancy..

In short, if you are a Marduk fan, you will certainly need this live set, with bonus DVD, in your black metal collection.

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